Predictive Analytics is a growing field where SEO Experts (and I mean experts, not dabblers) can bring a wealth of experience, by building quick adHoc web applications that pull out information from the web.

I recently saw this advert on the underground for a spread betting company, IG Index, which has a “reverse take” on the butterfly effect and is based on a branch of mathematics called convergence theory.

One of the great things about the internet is that you can carry out tests like “Could soaring phone sales be a good signal for the price of gold” with relative simplicity if you gave it some thought. Often – in the process – you can build something of value and possibly free for the public at large.

Here are a few examples of Predictive Analytics methodologies that we have either built or considered:

Business Intelligence Question:

How many days can the BBC run the same story on the evening news without disengaging with their audience?

Solution:

We look at the stories the BBC publishes on the web to see what other blogs, pages and social users link to the articles, using a combination of social media APIs and Majestic SEO’s Link Intelligence API on it fresh data to see the interest level rise and decline. As soon as the story peaks, the BBC should stop making it their headline story. News is only news the first time you hear it!

Business Intelligence Question:

Who is the best singer for a soft drink manufacturer to use for a drinks commercial?

Solution:

Build a tool that tracks the “download” number shown on each singer’s YouTibe video channel to understand which singer is getting the most traction. Plotting this day by day over several singers will also probably correspond to their relative personal earnings!

Business Intelligence Question:

Which social media marketing person should you engage with or employ to help you develop your social media presence online?

Solution:

Build a tool that takes a keyword for your industry and uses this in a blog based search engine like Technorati. Crawl the home pages of these results to track down information about the blog strengths but ALSO find links to the blooger Twitter handles. Then use the Klout API or other metrics to assess whether these entities have reach and are influential with a small group of well-connected people within the industry.

Business Intelligence Question:

Which national UK newspaper should I use for an online advertising campaign and can I update this day by day please?

Solution:

A live solution is shown at the end of this post!

For many people, the idea of building something to answer questions like this sounds extraordinarily complex. But you would be wrong. It is simply a case of being able to understand the business question that needs to be asked, coming up with a proxy for measuring the answer and then building it. This is where the SEO experience comes in. Most SEO companies just do what thought leaders in the industry say. Some though, actually have been building tools and weapons for their armoury over many years (You can use some of ours free over at http://labs.receptional.com.)

SEOs know how to build tools that can quickly look up large amounts of data not otherwise collated conveniently online by simply leveraging their natural skillset. We believe that SEO companies will find a natural home in the predictive analytics and business intelligence world and would encourage stock market analysts, business analysts and market fortune tellers to engage with an SEO consultancy and have one “on tap” at all times. Check their credibility, check their ingenuity, then get them to make your world come alive!

Which UK media outlet has the best online reach today? Solution below (updated daily)